How to make a pressure cooker Pot Roast One Pot

You’ve never had a one pot meal that is this as elegant! The pistachio and fresh thyme crust make this beef roast exciting to both the eyes and taste buds. The sauce is made from the beef’s own juices, a jus, the whole meal can be ready in about 45 minutes – versus making a roast in the oven in 2 to 2.5 hours!While carrots only take 2 minutes and potatoes 10 to cook under pressure, you can cook them both in 5 using a little trick that I will teach you – plus a few more!

One Pot Meals in the Pressure Cooker

A one pot meal, as the name says, is an entire meal (that includes vegetables, starch and protein) made in one cooking vessel. There are several techniques to make one pot meals in the pressure cooker. Some dishes, likes stews ad roasts, naturally lend themselves to the addition of vegetables during cooking, while others need accessories, tin foil or little helping hand.

Stack-it. Using trivets and small additional containers or steamer baskets, you can cook a meat dish on the bottom of the pressure cooker, and then stack on a steamer basket or additional container to cook rice or vegetable. Unlike an oven, the hottest part of the pressure cooker is at the bottom because of the direct contact with the metal which is closer to the heat source . Longer-cooking foods always go on the bottom. Then, work your way up the stacks to finish with vegetables at the top which, with the exception of the potatoes, always need very little heat and time to cook!

Phase it. Use ingredients with different cooking times by phasing them into the pressure cooker one at a time. Start with the longest-cooking ingredient first (usually meat or a legume), then, when it is getting closer to the cooking time of the next ingredient, bring down the pressure, open the pressure cooker to add the next ingredient. You can do this several times and even cook the last ingredient without the pressure cooking top (like adding pasta or cooking dumplings).

Wrap it! Using al Cartoccio, or packet cooking, you can actually wrap a whole meal in a packet and cook it by steaming it in your pressure cooker. Also, tin foil can be used to slow down the cooking of ingredients that usually take less time, as Lorna Sass does this in her Reader Recipe on Triplex Cooking.

Re-size it. The size, density and thickness of a food, will dictate how long it will take to cook in the pressure cooker. Use this information to your advantage when crafting a one pot meal. For example, in the instructional recipe below, I was able to cook carrots (which only need 2 minutes at high pressure) and potatoes (which need 10 minutes at high pressure) together in just 5 minutes. I simply used thick carrots and cooked them whole, while the potatoes were sliced down to a large cubes.

Recipe it. All gimmicks aside, some recipes are natural one pot meals and do not need any tricks special techniques. Recipes like chowders, chilies, soups, stews, risotto and packet cooking (links to specific recipes for most of these, below) naturally have almost all of the food groups required for a one pot meal, or can be easily served with a nice thick slice of bread.

Do you have any tricks or favorite one pot meals? Leave a comment and link, below!

Start by making the rub. Crush the nuts well, and mix the pistachio powder with the black pepper and thyme. Reserve a quarter of the rub to garnish the roast after cooking.

Press as much of the crust on the roast - some may fall off during cooking - but you will add another layer when the roast is finished. Reserve half of the rub to garnish the roast after cooking.

Preheat the pressure cooker with the top off, then add a little swirl of olive oil and when that is warm, place the roast in and sear it the in pan well on all sides.

Spoon out any of the pistachios that have fallen off the roast so that they do not burn on the bottom of the pan.

De-glaze the pressure cooker with chicken stock.

Close and lock the pressure cooker lid. Put the pressure cooker on high heat. When the pan reaches pressure (with this model, the indicator comes up to the green ring) count 30-35 minutes cooking time under high pressure.

When time is up, open the pressure cooker with the Natural pressure release. Electric pressure cookers: Disengage the “keep warm” mode, or unplug the cooker, and open the lid when the pressure indicator/lid-lock has gone down (about 20 to 30 minutes). Stovetop pressure cookers: Move the cooker off the burner and wait for the pressure to come down on its own (about 10 minutes). Please disregard the photo with the water on-the-lid release, we no longer recommend it

Add the roughly cubed potatoes and place the whole carrots on top - you will want to work quickly so not too much heat to escapes, allowing pressure to be reached again faster.

Close and lock the pressure cooker lid, again. Put the pressure cooker on high heat. When the pan reaches pressure count 5 more minutes cooking time under high pressure.

Open the pressure cooker with the Normal Release method, as detailed above, and take out the carrots, slice them and put them on the serving platter. Remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon and place on the serving platter. Take out the roast, and place on a plate tented with aluminum foil to rest.

While the roast is resting, make the a jus sauce. Filter the cooking liquid through a fine sieve and put it back in the pressure cooker. Add the wine and butter and reduce the liquid in the pressure cooker at high heat, without the pressure cooking lid, to about half. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Sprinkle with fresh parsley, serve the a jus sauce in a gravy boat, or easy-pour container (I used a small ceramic milk pitcher!) Have the guests can pour the amount of sauce they wish over the meat once it is on their plates.

Hi Kitty, congratulations! I thought of promoting the roast as a romantic way to leave you free for other activities but you know.. it’s difficult to make a roast sound romantic!

5 lbs of almonds!!! I love it. I just saw a program on raw food where the lady soaked the almonds overnight, blanched them for about 1 minute (for the peels to come off) cooled them and then blended them with enough water to make it the raight consistency, strained and — fresh almond milk! Made my mouth water!!! She also had a great segment on sprouting legumes and eating them raw! It all sounds so exotic and new to me – though I have been curious about sprouting since I heart it makes legumes cook faster (though you spend 3-5 days sprouting them!) Ooops, totally off-topic now.

Happy Anniversary!

Briarose and Sandra, thank you for your kind comments.

Ciao,

L

why not use a few of the almonds for the crust? Maybe with a little honey! The rest

You can see all of my pressure cooker shopping tips, under the tab “go shopping” at the top of this page.

For the photographed recipes on this website, and my family of 4, I primarily use 6L /6.34qt – on occasion I use a large wide pressure braiser, or a small pressure pan.

For the most versatility, I recommend a 6L pressure cooker – and if you can afford it to get a set with a second smaller base that will fit the same pressure cooking top.

Once you get really good at pressure cooking, and move ALL your wet cooking (steaming, braising, boiling) to the pressure cooker you may find that even the pressure cooker set is not enough. At that point, I recommend investing in a nice wide braiser pressure cooker.

It’s quicker when you are adding food later to cook for the last few minutes in the already-hot pressure cooker, but it still takes longer to reach pressure when the pan has more food (up to 2/3 its interior height). The time to reach pressure increases more when you add frozen food e.g. frozen peas.

I thought I’d let readers know that the pressure cooker can be closed and on high heat with the food and liquid, but appear to be doing nothing except releasing more and more steam from the coloured pressure indicator, until suddenly it rises and the pressure builds. This can take as long as 10 – 15 minutes if you have lots of food! This assumes: the lid is closed properly, the pan rim is not dented, the gasket is not defective, the heat is on high and the pressure setting is selected.

Apologies for the long-winded message, but it’s something I have learned when pressure cooking lots of food compared to a small amount.

How would you do this in my elite elect pressure cooker? I’m knew and have not used it. Mine has buttons to push for meat and I need to know as simply as possible. I just want to push the button that is for the ingredient. Like just push the meat button without having to set it manually. Please help cause I get confused on all the number stuff. Just want to push the button that says the ingredient and hoe to cook with elite pressure cooker. I’m afraid to use this .

Nan, the buttons on the front of your electric pressure cooker cannot account for the cooking time for the size/cut of every type meat recipe. It’s best that you familiarize yourself with manual mode and how to input the minutes. In the meantime, let us know what model you are using and I’ll take a look at the manual. Also, just in case it’s not stated in the manual, push the meat button and let us know how many minutes of cooking time it says.

wait, i thot natural release is letting it depressurize itself, without turning the lever to vent?? crap, guess I’ll do a 10-minute natural release and take my chances. rather have it underdone than over.

Helene you are right, meats usually require Natural release. However for “boiling” meat recipes, where the meat is covered in liquid, you can get away with a normal release. Here is more information than you thought you’d want to know about pressure release:

well i have to say, i was just doing a basic roast with tubers. i dont sear first either but just salted and put meat in with a cup of water over top. i didnt have the shrooms when i went to get them out of fridge (!) but i did use cut onion and celery on top the carrots and they did great.
the IP never did reach pressure again after putting in vegs so i finally just looked at food and vegs were done and meat tender.
i didnt marinate my chuck roast tho so it was tough once it wasnt hot anymore.
good outcome but no idea what happened with not pressurizing after adding vegs…filled pot too high?

Hi Laura,
I found your website when I was searching online for pressure cooking tips. I’m a beginner with a Wolfgang Puck electric pressure cooker that hubby bought while watching TV ads selling cooking gadgets late one night! I’ve tried using it and cooked a pork roast stew and a beef chuck roast. Now I need your help please!
So far my experience has been that the meat is tender when it’s hot and freshly out of the pressure cooker, then it was dry and kind of tough without much flavor later on, especially when the meat wasn’t hot anymore. Even my kids said so :( What am I doing wrong?
And have you tried cooking prime rib in an electric pressure cooker? Would it work well? Would appreciate your guidance on a recipe for it.
I read your reviews of electric PCs so now I’m hoping to buy an Instant Pot at Amazon’s next Prime Day! Alas, the Breville PC is too pricey for me.
Thanks so much!
Emmie

Emmie, don’t worry, I’ve heard good things about the Wolfgang Puck cooker – there is a lot worse out there!

Dry meat is a common mistake. It happened to me when I got started when I pulled out a juicy, plump, tender roast from the pressure cooker and it was a shrived brick of strings by the time it got to the table. I did a little research because I literally saw this happen before my eyes and I wanted to know why – so I could stop it. I learned that basically the higher the temperature difference between a hot liquid and the atmosphere, the faster the evaporation. Think of how super-hot that meat was compared to your kitchen and, perhaps, how steamy it was. Well, all of the roasts juices literally EVAPORATED in seconds!

So to solve this, we have to “cool down” he meat before it comes out of the pressure cooker so it’s at least down to “boiling”. This is why I recommend always opening a steaming or braising recipe (like this roast) be opened with Natural Release. With very liquid meat soups and stews that you might want to reduce, anyway, you can safely use a faster opening method which will actually speed-up liquid reduction.

Ahhhhh, that explains it! We were waiting for the Wolfgang Puck PC to release naturally and when the valve didn’t sink down (that’s supposed to happen after the natural release, per the instruction manual it came with), after waiting 5-10 minutes, my hubby decided to release it manually. One of the roast recipes in the matching cookbook didn’t say how long natural release would take. Next time we’ll wait 20-30 minutes after it’s done cooking for the natural release. So when a recipe says cook time 30 minutes, it actually means 1 hour before you can put the meal on the table!

For a meat stew, if we open it faster to reduce the liquid, won’t that also make the meat tougher later on?

While the meat is immersed in liquid, it will remain tender as its juices cannot evaporate into liquid. So, let the stew stand stirring occasionally for 5 minutes before serving to ensure the cooking liquid (and conversely the meat in it) has cooled down enough to serve. Don’t worry, it will still be piping hot.

When you open a pressure cooker quickly you will often see the liquid inside is still “boiling” – remember that temperature has come “DOWN” to a boil, not “UP” as it usually does in conventional cooking!

I take advantage this “phonomena” in my cookbook to reduce tomato sauce quickly and also for adding thickner directly (aka corn starch slurry or preppared burre blanc) to stir into a stew while it’s cooling.

That’s tricky. Most of the things I would suggest are also fermented. I often make a jus using a combination of soy sauce, fish sauce, mirin, Tamarind water, and a little hot sauce mixed in with the pan juices. But the first three of those are fermented products.

You could just leave it out. You will lose a lot of complexity in the sauce, but it will work.

Another idea would be Tamarind water, Verjuice, an anchovy, some tomato paste and a little pepper. But I have never tried it.

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